StarHawk review

Summary

Our Score:

8

Pros

Effective use of RTS base-building elements

Thrilling multi-player battles

Cons

Generic looks

Short and repetitive single-player campaign

Available on PS3

Tired of over-hyped, underwhelming shooters
that don’t have two ideas to rub together? StarHawk might just be the
antidote. On the one hand, nobody could accuse it of being over-hyped.
Few of us would have put it on our 2012 gaming wish list, and it’s the
sequel to a game – WarHawk – that could best be described as a cult
online hit in the early days of PS3.

On the other hand, StarHawk is a
game that exceeds expectations. It’s not the most visually dazzling,
richly atmospheric or thrilling shooter around, but it has a fresh take
on old genres and a clutch of good ideas, and it’s all been executed
with a high degree of polish. We doubt this quote will make the box, but
StarHawk is surprisingly good.

A mish-mash of ideas

It’s
not that the ideas or concepts are particularly new. StarHawk is a
hybrid of shooter and RTS genres, with elements of Gears of War,
Starsiege: Tribes, MechWarrior, Red Faction and Battlefield, but with
streamlined aspects of Command and Conquer, Dark Reign and StarCraft.
This isn’t revolutionary – Battlezone was doing the same thing back in
1998, and Section 8 has similar ideas at work three years ago – but it’s
probably the best implementation we’ve seen. StarHawk has just enough
strategy to make it more interesting, but not enough to detract from the
blasting at its core.

The plot and setting take the same magpie
approach, and it’s not hard to see chunks of Joss Whedon’s Firefly,
James Cameron’s Avatar and Robotech/Battlemech in StarHawk’s sci-fi
western premise. In the future, mankind has colonised the planets and
thousands of pioneers have laid claim to mysterious energy sources known
as rifts. However, rifts can have a corrupting influence, transforming
some prospectors into outlaw mutants who will go to any length to get
more rift energy.

StarHawk’s single-player hero Emmett Gray is
himself half-mutant, able to absorb rift energy but still in touch with
his human side. Acting as a kind of gun-for-hire, it’s his job to make
sure that energy is collected and safely transported, fending off
attacks from the ‘outcasts’ when needs be.

In practice, this
means blasting away at the outcasts then using the collected energy to
build whatever resources Emmett needs. StarHawk is played out in
third-person, but it’s not a cover-based shooter in the mould of Gears
of War. Instead, it’s all about hitting objectives hard and fast, then
building whatever you need to defend or assault the next one. During the
course of the campaign, most facilities you can think of will be
deployed to assist, ranging from simple defensive turrets to sniper
watchtowers and supply bunkers, each giving Emmett access to more
weapons.

Take to the skies

More importantly, garages,
corrals and hangers give Emmett and his allies access to vehicles,
ranging from speeder bikes to warthog-style jeeps and – most excitingly –
the Hawks. Basically mechs that transform into fighter jets, the Hawks
enable Emmett to take the fight into the air, or even into space.

There’s
a lot going on here, but the surprise is how well it all fits together.
The building interface is instantly accessible and very easy to use,
and whether you’re on foot, on wheels or in flight the movement controls
are intuitive and responsive, with excellent handling and a versatile
set of weapons.

The levels also have an interesting structure.
You’re not starting off at one point in a level and working your way
through to the end, but moving between objectives across open maps,
establishing a beachhead, moving out to attack key objectives, then
defending them from waves of outcast attacks. The single-player game has
enough sense to throw in checkpoints and give you room to breathe and
prepare for the next assault, and the game scales up nicely to give you
new equipment and new enemies, so that there’s always something new to
get to grips with.

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